Saturday, November 8, 2014

The New Player Experience, Part 2

Previously, on MinerBumping... Agent Capt Starfox went undercover as a new player to investigate notorious rebel leader TDD Dominaters' latest corporation. After being interviewed by TDD himself, Starfox's Bismarck Koskanaiken alt was invited to join the "academy".

A minute later, Starfox's alt was enrolled in the academy. It consisted of a chat between himself and TDD Dominaters. Clearly, TDD spared no expense. But Starfox was apprehensive. Now that he was in an "academy" chat instead of a regular corp interview, what kinds of questions would he need to answer?

TDD was curious what country Bismarck was from. Within 40 seconds, he got Bismarck's answer, forgot it, and asked him again. Welcome to the academy.

For the rest of the academy chat, TDD asked Bismarck questions about his timezone. Reading the transcript of TDD interviewing a new recruit is kind of weird. TDD conducts an interview like an alien trying to pass himself off as a human.

Bismarck's training session came to a close. TDD then announced that the chat wasn't the real academy. That would come later. First, Bismarck would need to read an EVEmail about it.

At the time, TDD's corp was called Strategically Integrated Coalition of Nations. As the "academy" EVEmail explained, the corp was focused on achieving its goals. The first goal, it seems, was to throw as many buzzwords as possible into a blender and make an EVEmail out of it. Success!

I actually find myself in agreement with TDD on one point: Everyone needs to be on the same path, or there will be chaos. That path is the Code.

As we have seen, the academy is actually a multi-layered process. First there was the interview with TDD. Once in the academy, TDD invited Bismarck to a second interview. Then came the EVEmail. In this section, TDD explains that once you're accepted, you'll take classes. Those classes will determine whether or not you'll be accepted. Maybe the academy is like a provisional membership, or maybe it's some sort of Schrödinger's Carebear situation. I wonder if TDD's own alts could make it through all this nonsense.

As always, there are some requirements for joining the corp. Not everyone is worthy of the privilege of mining in highsec with TDD's crew. I think it's supposed to say "language" instead of "languish".

On the other hand, maybe TDD has it right.

Buried at the very bottom of the EVEmail, we get the fine print: You need to play EVE for 4 hours a day, minimum. The good news is that you only need to meet the 4-hour minimum at least 3 days a week. Why do you need to spend so much time mining and running missions in highsec? Because TDD needs his corp members to make him a bunch of money in taxes. According to conventional wisdom, corps like these need to be protected from awoxers so they can scoop up as many new players as possible. Serving time in TDD's corp makes you more likely to want to play EVE long-term, they say.

Call me old-fashioned. Call me a bittervet. But I think corps like TDD's should be awoxed, wardecced, and destroyed by any available means.

TDD's Strategically Integrated Coalition of Nations corp was, naturally, wardecced into oblivion. TDD was forced to repeatedly create and fold a series of new corporations. He hasn't given up. Tactical Stability Union is the latest corp to "service" new players.

You might object that our Agent, Capt Starfox, wasn't a genuine newbie; he was only posing as one. How does TDD's corp look through the eyes of an actual new player, one who doesn't know about the New Order or TDD's history? From time to time, New Order Intelligence provides me with players' APIs, allowing me to read their EVEmails. One of those players happened to be a member of TDD Dominaters' Tactical Stability Union. In our next installment, I will provide you with access to something special: The TDD experience from the perspective of an innocent newbie.

It's obviously a bad corp...but remember....these are the only corps that publicly recruit because awoxxers destroy all the good corps, so only the baddies are left. When they get rid of awoxxing hopefully we can have some actually useful highsec corps.

ummm, hang on, so with awoxing going away. how is this going to make useful hi-sec corps magically appear?Wishful thinking?With awoxing disappearing won't this just make MORE bad corps like this appear since there is nothing that can be done about them as they bleed away fresh blood?

Good corps will be more open with recruiting, and the free market will naturally lead players to the good corps knocking the bad ones out of business. Currently the good ones don't recruit publicly, so only the **** ones are an option.

Good corps don't need to be stingy with recruiting because good corps are run by people who know what the hell they are doing. Any corp that has tight recruiting standards now has them for reasons other than awoxing. Unless, of course, they are morons or scared little wimps who can't handle the idea of their space pixels being destroyed.

Good corps, and good players, do not avoid interaction because of fear.

Good corps are run in such a way that a HiSec Awoxxer simply cannot do much damage. Corp theft? Handled with decent hangar permissions. Friendly fire? Replace the affected line members' ships and ensure your line members are aware that flying bling is just begging to get ganked. Spies? Not even remotely impacted by these changes.

Sorry Veers, but once again, your dislike of a game feature seems to stem from the fact it's supported by people you loathe.

Ah, and now we see the true spirit of the carebear. Anon 4:58 lists "two good hi-sec corps with public recruitment"

Veers then dismisses one for being a "PvP corp", implying that because it is a PvP corp, it is not good. Either that or he is terribly inarticulate and unable to properly qualify his assertions. He also dismisses the other corp listed for hand-holding, even though that is what he wants CCP to do to everybody, rather than it just happening in the corps that choose it. Blatant carebear hypocrisy

Of course there are good highsec corps. New Order Logistics is one that immediately springs to mind. There are many others. He is attempting to pervert the words of the saviour of highsec through omission. If he were better able to put an argument together he might be a threat, but as it is (and as it is with all carebears) his arguments are weak and his lies easy to see through.

As James himself put it, there are currently no good highsec PvE corps. I would qualify that "which publicly recruit." You awoxxers make it so that any good highsec PvE corp will basically only take people known in RL, and shunt the new/casual players into terribad corps like the one in this post, which you then awoxx. You create your own problem, and then declare that no good corps exist! Be a force for good instead of a force for evil.

Eve Uni is a hand holding sissy corp. RvB is just a pew pew PvP corp. Neither meet the need for a viable, functional, and open to the public PvE focused corp in highsec. None currently exist, mostly because awoxxers blow them out of existence.

lol Veers maybe your awesome corp will start open recruitment after the awox nerf? surely you won't mind the constant wardecing, corp theft, spias, and all the other tools still available to the noble bad guy?

Well you probably won't. you'll wait a few more 6 week patches for CCP to nerf those out also.

Obviously I expect changes to the wardecc and theft mechanics to follow. CCP is finally "getting" that the game isn't fun for new/casual players, whose corps are beating into the ground by griefers. The only way to make the game enjoyable and social for highsec PvE players is to start curbing the griefer circus that currently exists.

One option would be to just get rid of the entirely because they are pretty useless. Barring that I would expect higher fees, perhaps a cap on wardeccs, shorter wars, making it easier to divvy up assets and drop wars, maybe a 1 war at a time rule, and a long cooldown between wardeccs, etc...

On the subject of changing war mechanics: I would argue that every corporation should exist under a war dec. The target corps should change, but there should never be a time when someone else can kill you free and clear.Additionally, members of a corp should have 24 hours to avoid a war dec, but after that the war lasts for seven days regardless of whether they drop the corp or not. Finally, the cost of continuing a war dec should be lowered while the cost of initiating a war dec should be raised, and either side should have the option to continue the war for a fee.

The change of the awoxing mechanic will reduce the number of terrible corps that get culled too soon. More terrible corps will grow a bit larger and accumulate more assets before being confiscated by honourable and good New Order agents. This I predict, just wait and see. :o)

I do not understand why there seems to be a move to make EvE more forgiving to morons. If you are shit at a game why should the game be modified to accommodate you? Want to play where you are safe? Fuck off to Sisi.

All these carebears believing themselves to be speaking for the newbies, such arrogance. They are fully capable of speaking for themselves, and will do so in the next installment so there is no need to attempt to silence them by claiming to speak for them. Just have patience, James 315 has said it is coming, so we know it's true.

Veers, you always speak of these new/casual players. Could you define them? are they TDD? are they afk AP freighter pilots? The miner in a hulk and an Orca in a .5? what do you consider the upper limit of a new payer? 1 month? 2 months? 6 months? Is a new player one who plexes out a mach with purple in his first month? please define how what this new player is to you, use all you lawyering skills and poor understanding of Eve to give us all an idea of what you mean.

Basically it's a player who wants to be focused on PvE in highsec...is not interested in highsec PvP, and wants to play collaboratively with other people without being blown up. They aren't looking for wars, awoxxes, or to change the face of new eden. they just want to show up, do some mining or mission running with friends, etc.... No purple stuff, just the standard mining and mission running fits.

All of these are already possible. There's literally nothing stopping any HiSec resident from fleeting up with a few mates and running missions/doing mining ops in modestly fit ships together. They don't even need to protect themselves from non-consensual PvP as CONCORD will deter pretty much any ganker.

Given the above, I honestly don't understand your reasoning behind the removal of the limit engagement mechanics that exist.

Then why has CCP said that ganking has actually gone -down- recently? And as Anon 7:14 put it, you don't really need ties to fleet up with someone or join up with other people.

And of course there's also nothing stopping a highsec resident from flying smarter solo to avoid ganking. As one person put it on EVE-O, "As a non-combatant, your best tank is to be elsewhere."

*In response to Veers' post at 4:43*

A new player is someone who is new to the game. Not necessarily wanting to only do PVE. There are people who sub for EVE to do PVP, I know I sure did, and I had quite grand goals at the time too. Unless of course you're talking about an altogether -different- type of player? If it's casuals, they have their place, but they should also recognize that there are those that have different styles of play than they do and that conflict exists.

Yo Veers have you ever been a part of the "leadership" of a good sized hisec corp? because I have, and let me tell you the problem with the current corp system has nothing to do with war-decs or awoxing, in fact those are pretty much the only two working "corp features" (we held some pretty sick thunderdomes and managed to have some fun with wardecs despite shitty station games)

what Hi-sec corps need is more features like player owned pocos or some sort of "Hi-sec sov" system (something that is to FW what FW is to SOV) that provides real benefits to corp members, just anything that gives members meaningful goals to achieve and stuff to fight for.

Why do mission runners and miners require pooled resources? What's stopping individual players from trading with each other as needed? What's wrong with simply having a chat channel which provides all the advantage a corp does to the HiSec PvPer without any of the drawbacks of thieves, awoxxers & wardecs?

Suicide ganking is mitigated as the community will warn each other of nearby threats (known & active gankers), members can help each other not be gank targets (advising each other to not fit bling), and people running the show can provide an SRP to help those unfortunate enough to be ganked.

Notice that all these advantages do not require corp hangars, contracts or wallets.